The Afterimage
by Frickadilly
Summary: Jackie learns that Valmont is dead, and seeks a means of understanding what happened, which leads him to question just who the man was. WARNING: description of torture and other mature themes, not for young readers. Mentions of characters from the cartoon Gargoyles but doesn't require prior knowledge of them, the story is focused on Jackie and Valmont.


**Title: The Afterimage  
Fandom(s): Jackie Chan Adventures, Gargoyles  
Characters/Pairings: Possible Jackie/Valmont  
Rating: R  
Genre: Angst, tragedy  
Warnings: Character death, torture, rape, murder  
Summary: Jackie learns that Valmont is dead, and seeks a means of understanding what happened, which leads him to wonder just who the man was.  
A/N: I don't own the rights to Jackie Chan Adventures or Gargoyles. I am simply borrowing some characters and concepts for non-profit creative purposes.**

They were playing squash when the news came in. Jackie was winning, and Captain Black was praising his progress with increasingly strained condescension. And then he was given a good reason to miss, having nevertheless attempted a swing in conjunction with answering his pager, like he was some sort of suave secret agent who could pull off those kind of moves.

He stared at his pager silently for a moment, the racket lilting in his awkwardly extended arm. To Jackie he looked benign and comical. He was wearing his billowing bag-like sports shorts which exposed his muscular knees, and there was a large sweat patch on his shirt that stranded his pecks like a pair of wonky grey islands. The captain, light-hearted and practical as he was, had no qualms about wearing a head-band despite his baldness, and the article alienated his skull absurdly from the bemused, bushy-browed face that now contemplated the screen of his pager.

"What is it?" Jackie was forced to prompt.

He didn't reply straight away. When he did, his voice was loud and informative, channelled into something blandly positive by years of cop-like pragmatism. "Valmont's dead."

It was Jackie's turn to be silent. He didn't feel his himself release his racket, but when he looked down it was on the ground, like it had retired at its own accord, knowing the game was now over. "What...?"

Captain Black didn't repeat himself. Instead, he gave big sigh that was at once both relieved and remorseful, and ambled to the back bench of Section Thirteen's sports court. He sat with his knees wide apart as he swigged his powerade. Jackie approached him hastily.

"When?"

"Last night in New York. It looks like the work of the Pack, but they're bringing him down to the morgue tomorrow so we can get the coroners on it."

Jackie's mind raced. The Pack. They had been responsible for many a diligent night at Section Thirteen. Jackie knew of the individuals: Fox, Wolf, Jackal, Hyena, Dingo and Coyote; all assaultive star images with vibrant criminal histories relayed in fragments by a pacing, preoccupied Black. They were former TV gladiators who'd taken to hunting and murdering criminals for sport. To Jackie, a humble personal trainer removed from the razzle dazzle of celebrity culture and the grit and blood of crime-fighting, the Pack represented a vague unit of evil; a point of athleticism and martial arts expertise that Jackie's students had to surpass, and a constant source of respect for Captain Black. It offered a few co-ordinates for Jackie to map his limited knowledge of the criminal underworld. What came back to him now were the words of Finn that he had overheard during the enforcer's period of parole at _Uncle's Rare Finds_:

_"Valmont will be back on his feet before you know it. That guy's got more skills than he lets on. Dude outran the Pack three times."_

Get back on his feet he did, or at least that was the impression with which he had left Jackie for the final time. And when that was, to his own bemusement, he found he couldn't remember. When they'd uncovered that secret tomb in India? When they'd run into each other in that Parisian bar? Maybe even as recently as that last month, around the time of that shoot-out with the triads, for all he could remember.

Like a kick in the stomach, this new revelation took effect on the mad flux of this narrative_. Valmont is dead. _

He shuffled on the spot, cast his head about, and took to peeling stray hairs from his t-shirt. He was desperate to ask something, anything; to prologue the conversation with the series of essential questions the situation doubtlessly deserved. But the voice that prized at his jaw was word-free. What more questions could be asked? The answers were there. He'd been murdered in New York by a pack of infamous mercenaries. It had happened last night. He'd probably run for his life like he'd always done, put up a good fight for which he was known, died from the same brutal treatment inflicted on all the others. All the nameless criminal others that had come before Valmont and would now come after. Or at least after the conversation that should have been filling this silence; a conversation in which the crimelord was relentlessly rekindled in the orgasmic thrill that both announced and denied an impending and unthinkable void, during which Jackie could prattle on forever while Black sat drinking his powerade, as though they were on some endless break.

"He's...in New York at the moment..." Jackie eventually muttered, "but he's coming here..."

Black nodded slowly. "They're bringing the body over tomorrow, yes." Then his eyes flooded with alarm. "You don't want to _see_ it, do you?"

Jackie put his hand over his mouth. His eyes flickered down, and he exhaled thoughtfully. When he spoke, his own voice sounded strange, both whimsical and distraught. "I - want to see him, yes."

Three hours of frantic busywork followed his game of squash, and then a meal in which he had let the news slide from his tongue to await the reactions of Jade and Uncle. The former had gabbled and been silent alternately, torn between the thrill of reality and the distress of its imprint on the light-hearted fabric of her childhood. The latter had gazed wisely into his miso soup, locating the incident within the larger frame of good and evil with a brief clog of reluctance. And then Jackie had left the table prematurely, to shadow a grumpy and busy Black for far too long and no real reason. A sleepless night followed.

The next day there was more to do. Captain Black requested Jackie accompany him to San Francisco police station to meet Valmont's wife; he was to interrogate her about her husband's death, and Jackie was to act as her appropriate adult. Jackie wondered about Black's motivation for assigning him this position. The appropriateness of his adulthood was a stretch, given that he'd spent half of it foiling the crimelord. Was this a sign that Black didn't think the details of the death would affect Jackie, or the opposite - a statement that Jackie had no right to grieve for this man, following a suspicion that he did? It occurred to him that Black sensed he did not know how to feel, and was endeavouring to give him an answer without knowing it himself. Perhaps he was just giving Jackie what he knew he would want: more time in the crimelord's waning shadow.

The contents of that interview were fresh in his mind when he emerged from the interrogation room. The things Black had imparted in a stiff voice to that little jet-lagged Indian woman; things that had made her tremble and gasp for breath, her brilliant eyes widening like someone facing the threat of being swallowed. So entranced had Jackie been by the reactions of this distraught young widow that he forgot his own, though he gained some suspicion of them when Captain Black called for a break. After getting his coffee, Jackie went for a walk, and found the enforcers in the foyer. Ratso was picking his nails solemnly and Chow was rolling a cigarette. A door to the right opened, and a hand-cuffed Finn was being led out by a cop with whom Jackie was aquainted. The scrawny red-head alerted the others of Jackie's presence, his dull eyes landing on the archaeologist, before he croaked listlessly, "Chan".

Jackie just stared from one to the next, struck by the absurdity of how they just never changed. The exception was Finn's prison jumpsuit. He had recently gone down on a drug charge, and had no doubt been temporarily released into the custody of the officer present for the purpose of the investigation into Valmont's death. There was a moronic silence during Jackie's scrutiny, until Chow, having had his fill of it, whirred round to face Jackie with his arms splayed and screeched melodramatically, "WHAT?!"

The cop reprimanded him, "Cool it, Sang" (for this was supposedly the enforcer's last name) but even he was smirking in accordance with the bittersweet amusement of the others. Jackie's reputation as an upstanding vigilante was known throughout San Francisco's police force, so that none of the men before him would have been surprised if Jackie had now found something trivial for which to reprimand them. The officer present was a grizzled one, but he was openly sympathetic regarding the enforcers' haunting sense of devastation.

"The interviews are on hold for lunch. Come on McCarthy (he motioned to Finn), I fancy some waffles, which means you've got to come too. If you're a good boy I'll even treat you. Are you two going to join us?"Chow and Ratso rose, wordlessly accepting the pity invitation. The cop turned to the archaeologist. "You coming, Jackie?"

Jackie almost burst into hysterics at the absurdity of the situation. And what the heck, maybe he should go, and they could all reminisce about Valmont, like they were part of some big family instead of two poles of ethics, and smile as the pancakes turned to ashes in their mouths because everything beyond each other's eyes was poisoned by the hideous torture and murder of this tragic antagonist. He shook his head stiffly, and the cop grunted, "your loss."

Ten o'clock. Friday night. Thirty-one hours since he had been told the news. Jackie stood in the doorway of section thirteen's morgue, his heart racing. Finally he was to confront the fate of his old enemy. The threshold betrayed the crippling coldness beyond; a fan hushed a current of silence, and a row of stud lights in the ceiling cast an ethereal glow on the examination table.

_"Just promise you'll be out before Eleven."_ Captain Black had insisted, upon emerging from the morgue's stairway with a handkerchief over his mouth. Black had no wish to revisit the scene when Jackie had decided he was ready. The archaeologist wondered what reassurance the Captain got from the curfew he'd given him; was he trying to spare his friend some potential damage that anything over an hour could cause, but anything under could not? Maybe he was just trying to assert some control over the situation. It seemed he'd been doing that all day. As soon as the news came in, he hadn't spared a moment before getting on the case; tracking the Pack, tracing Valmont's activities over the past six months, digging up old files within the crimelord's extensive criminal record for some means of connecting the dots.

_"The camera's are busted in the morgue." _Black had complained on their drive back from the police station. _"Talk about timing. The supervisor from Section 12 will give me an earful if I don't the handyman on it soon. I called that son of a gun three times and he hasn't picked up."_

_"It's not a big deal."_ Jackie had assured him passively. _"The coroner will be there most of the day. And Valmont is not going anywhere."_

The impact of this statement hit Black first, who swiftly returned it to Jackie by way of an nauseous glance. The amount of times Black had assured himself the same thing was almost laughable. Valmont was never not going anywhere, a lesson the Captain had learnt the hard way over his years of pursuing and confining the master criminal. Until now, that is. To locate Valmont so casually with the coroner was to forget that such a statement no longer needed to be said, not now or ever again. It mirrored Black's absurd line of thinking, his trivial preoccupations with the details surrounding the crimelord's death that came of his vein attempts to assert a control he'd never had. After everything, after all those years of pursuit, death had claimed the crimelord before he had. And now it was like none of it mattered.

Taking a deep breath, Jackie crossed the precipice. He needed to understand that it was over; that no longer would they be confronting each other at the Natural History Museum or a Mayan tomb or a curator's private party. And he needed to see it to believe it.

He didn't know what he'd been expecting, but what he saw did not make him scream or throw up. He found himself light-headed as he approached the naked cadaver, and some feeble feeling a little like relief crept up to him as Valmont's sharp features met the light. This elegant spectacle vaguely suggested a harmony between the man on the table and the vibrant image in his mind. He was always a good-looking man; even when scowls had warped his finely sculpted features, that truth was as conspicuous as the sun behind a cloud. Jackie swallowed, remembering the interview earlier.

_"What can you tell me about Valmont's relationship with one David Xanatos?"_

_Valmont's wife narrowed her eyes, but they didn't reach anger before she lowered them dejectedly. "It wasn't my business."_

_Captain Black coughed. "I assume then, you were aware of their alleged affair."_

_The woman shrugged. "We needed money."_

_"Was this a common occurrence with Valmont - excuse me - Julian? These same-sex affairs?"_

_"There was only one, as far as I know, and if there were more I don't care." She snapped. "My husband wasn't a homo, if that's what you mean. Girls, boys. It didn't matter. He loved money. And me."_

_Her last words weren't angry or anxious, instead they were confident and sad._

Now Jackie was close to the face. A glimmer of a grimace had been fossilised in death, and there were two dark strips running parallel on either cheek, where make-up had been channelled through by tears. That optimistic feeling had now vanished.

There are two hundred and six bones in the human body. Jackie knew this because he had broken over sixty of them in the past, and those weren't counting other people's. The man before him, he knew from the investigation, had had over half of his bones broken in cold calculated succession before he died. The coroner had arranged him in an orthodox position, so that the fractures were not immediately noticeable, but as Jackie completed his circuit around the body it became obvious; smooth mottles of swollen flesh portuded from the joints like the knarls of a tree where broken bones overlapped.

He'd read the report. He'd heard the details clarified by Black in the interrogation room. He'd been expecting a mess. And yet he realised that what he found most disturbing was the unexpected lack of blood and gore about the body. The coroner had cleaned up all the wounds, so that the unthinkable injuries inflicted on this man had an impression of cleanliness and grace; as though Valmont was some mythological monster born with this spray of deformities. The cigarette burns across his stomach formed a constellation of perfect brown coins, the charred naval its shimmering hub. His chest was inverted where his ribcage had been smashed and spidered evenly around his still heart. Jackie now realised that Valmont was underweight; every ounce of his bulk was muscle, and where there was less muscle, there was only bone and thick, franticly mapped veins that shone through his almost translucent skin. The skin was darker than he had expected. He'd learnt that the crimelord had been as Indian as he was British, with a deceased half-Brahman mother and an unknown Paravan father. It was only now that he noticed blotches on the skin and particularly horizontal streaks under his chin, where the pallid olive tones tapered to those of weak coffee. Jackie knew of the skin products popular in India, and this metrosexual master of disguise had evidently used them to their fullest advantage. The result was very little consistency in his tone; blotches, streaks and pools of darkness where the broken bones met.

What he had found particularly alarming upon reading the coroner's report, was the number and nature of the injuries inflicted years before the murder. Now he found himself compelled to examine them. Carefully, he leaned down and opened the man's mouth. Perfect teeth, far from the British stereotype. But he knew they were perfect for the wrong reasons; a result of a session with that infamous dentist Webber and his vampish girlfriend Porchsia Martindale. He had betrayed them during a deal, and they had claimed their share in his teeth. The fixed dentures gave away none of his past torment, but now they looked doll-like and ominous, so perfect amidst this magnificent degradation of the human form.

And then there was his head. Jackie hadn't understood the details when he'd read it in the coroner's file. Now he reached down and felt under the man for the band of his ponytail, carefully dragging it out. Valmont's lifeless visage was instantly swamped with thick white locks, but the damage to which the file referred was nevertheless conspicuous. On the right side of the man's head the lower layers of hair had been completely removed, exposing a substantial amount of bare skull. This area was rough with ridges of scar tissue, evidently having been once badly burnt, so that no hair had grown since. Jackie flipped the upper locks to the opposite side to gain a better view of this mutilation. What looked like an embellished Japanese character had been branded into his skull, the scar tissue palpably smoother in its wake. As Valmont's hair was so plentiful, it was unsurprising that Jackie had never seen this, but the thought that it had always been there whenever he'd confronted the crimelord now sent a chill down his spine. He wondered what gang of criminals had hated him enough to brand their logo into his head. He wondered how Valmont had survived such torture to banter so pompously with Jackie any number of years later.

Then there were surgical scars running down his throat, abnormally thick and sporting two sets of stitch marks. The coroner's report attributed these to two instances of tracheal surgery performed by the same dubious surgeon. Captain Black had dug out the details from the surgeon's records. The first surgery took place six years ago when Valmont had spluttered a trail of blood to a back-alley medical establishment after being held down in an ice cold bath with a detachable shower head half-way down his throat. Unable to breathe, he'd dug his fingernails into his own throat until he'd gouged himself a new air hole. The second surgery was much more recent, following the internal burns he'd suffered when possessed by Shendu. Jackie wondered ironically if in those moments of being scorched inside, Valmont had wished for the onslaught of water that had nearly drowned him years before.

Jackie deftly lifted Valmont's head and glanced at the scars on the back of his neck. These resembled large, long tears. They were shallower, shinier, and arguably appeared more merciful than their frontal counterparts. The story behind these was common knowledge; a number of well-known criminals had them, but it had never occurred to Jackie that Valmont could have been one of them until explicitly reading it. These long red drips were the result of a session with Pierson's pipette. Jackie was well acquainted with Pierson, a high-spirited cop with a good sense of humour who sometimes joined them for squash. But it was his job to extract information, and for this he was known to be efficient, clean and civilized, confronting the most wily criminals with only a pipette and a bottle. Jackie had caught him cracking a joke with Black before entering the room where Valmont was held, but that was several years ago, when Shendu had first been released and the Dark Hand had been arrested, not for the first or last time. Now Jackie knew the rest of the story. As Valmont sat bound in a chair, Pierson had swept his hair to the front and carefully administered single drops of hydrochloric acid onto his exposed neck, searing his flesh with little brooks of agony. It was known to be a relatively humane form of torture; the victim was left almost completely unharmed, and the pain varied mercifully, offering Valmont opportunity for civilised negotiation amidst his sobs. Pierson was a good guy, after all.

Then there were the self-inflicted scars; the needle marks and cuts on his wrists. The coroner's report noted traces of heroin in the bloodstream, and fainter scars that suggested a long history of self-harm. Jackie's finger ghosted over the needle pricks on the man's inner forearm, like the trails of unpicked threads. Who was this man who sat in the shadows dragging a blade across his flesh and injecting himself with posion? Jackie didn't recognise him in the enigma he'd fought; that flickering afterimage captured in the persistence of vision - the lunges through time from one abrupt encounter to the next - and then immortalised within a more persistant memory. Suddenly the concept of 'dead' felt meaningless on account of how alien the mutilated man before him seemed. This raw reality that had floated to the surface of Jackie's abstract impression of his fleeting combatant, might just as well have been something asleep. And Jackie found himself wondering if he would wake up. Open his eyes and tell him how it felt to have your teeth wrenched out of your skull, your own blood cascading down your chin like some hellish beard, and a beautiful woman laughing in the background before swooping down and consuming you with an excruciating kiss. Explain to him why he made those cuts and took those drugs, and went to bed with that smarmy businessman when he had a wife who loved him so much, and danced with death until death could no longer resist him. Jackie was desperate for that point of intersection between this stranger and the Valmont he knew to make sense to him, to integrate the creature before him into the man in his mind.

As it stood, all he could do was try to trace Valmont to the corpse before him; franticly follow those loose tails that he recognised of his rival as he darted through the back alleys of New York City pursued by the Pack. He and Valmont had chased each other all over the world, ran and fought with an interchanging edge on each other that bound them together in the present moment.

Now he pursued both time and Valmont through a New York of frantic imaginings. Hot on his tail he saw his green suit billowing about his legs, and felt his heart hammering like it was his own. Behind them both was an impending flood of unthinkable consequences that blurred the landscape into non-existence; Valmont knew what would happen if they caught him.

But Jackie could hear them; the thundering of boots behind, the growling breaths and the crazed hollering; _where ya goin' sunshine? Come on, you're not gonna run out on us again are ya? Don't you know we got an appointment that's long overdue?_

Darting left into a snicket, then scrambling over a clammy wall. And then through a series of back gardens, deftly scaling fences and ducking under washing lines, wading through the damp unkempt lawns of working class citizens. And then out onto the main road, where a horn blared as he hurtled into the path of an oncoming taxi and angry New Yorkers yelled. But the pack were still advancing on him. Emerging from the snicket like shadowkhan, they fanned out around the junction, preparing to corner him. But he kept on running, and Jackie found himself futilely rooting for his late nemesis as together they raged through this imaginary city.

He blinked his imaginings to a pause and looked back down at the corpse before him. What had he been thinking, Jackie began to wonder, as the Pack chased him with a determinacy that trumped all their previous attempts? When it became apparent that his body had aged significantly since the last hunt, and he couldn't trust himself to make the same jumps and climbs he'd managed years before? When he found himself barely able to breathe and racked with pain as he stumbled into the abandoned warehouse, but knew he had to keep on running, because the Pack were still hot on his tail?

At what moment had he known he was doomed? When Fox and Hyena came crashing through the windows at the far end of the room? Or when he turned to find Dingo advancing on him with nunchucks? Jackie replanted himself with Valmont and tried to rationalise this downfall through the skills he'd shared with the criminal. Swiftly he attempted to dodge this predator, but Hyena cartwheeled into his path, cackling maniacally. So he made a sharp turn and rebounded off the wall, aiming for one of the broken windows while a fierce looking Fox stood a couple of yards away with her left arm oddly outstretched. It was then that he noticed the glint of the wire pulled taut across the length of the room, and he twisted clumsily in the air in an attempt to avoid it. He saved his neck and felt the wire dig into his stomach instead, but as he sprung up he found Fox was circling him, effectively tying him up. Hyena was still cackling as she lassoed her own length of wire around him, while Valmont yanked his way to the ladder that led to the warehouse's mezzanine. Excruciatingly he climbed it, with Fox and Hyena tugging him downwards. And now Dingo had launched his grappling hook, and he screeched as it caught his neck, more so when Dingo yanked it down, taking a slice of his flesh off his clavicle in an attempt to bring him off the ladder. Now the hook was caught around his belt, and Valmont was on the platform, and Wolf and Jackal were already there, advancing on him from both directions. _This is it, Blue Eyes, end of the line..._

And faced with hell on the horizon, Jackie could see Valmont doing what he would do; trusting to luck and launching himself off the mezzanine and towards the window opposite. But Dingo's grappling rope snagged on the railing, and Dingo, who still held the end and flew into the air from Valmont's counteracting weight, jammed himself under the mezzanine, halting both their flights. Valmont was abruptly yanked backwards by the rope. Swinging wildly in the air with his limbs and bangs all over the place, the image Jackie had conjured merged with that of a panicking spider. And inches from the ground, he was delivered gently to the devil.

When he looked up, he was surrounded. Clambering to his feet, he wasted no time in desperately seeking a point of escape. He headed between Jackal and Wolf, but then the former took out his gun and casually shot him in the leg. He toppled in agony, only to receive a shot in the right buttock. Hyena cackled behind him as he crawled on his knees, and all the while the Pack members wandered towards him, closing in on him leisurely. _Oh yeah, looks like I roped me a Jules Valmont. Come to Daddy..._

That feeling - of being faced with such a fate as befell all the Pack's victims - was the feeling that marked the zenith of Jackie's connection with the crimelord, and the point at which he ceased to understand. It was at that point that Valmont had known where he would end up, and how much he would suffer before they found his mutilated body. The Pack gathered to inspect their catch. Finally they had caught their long sought after game, one of the most notorious criminals in the Western world. No longer was he a flicker of action, but that cologne was theirs to smell for as long as they wanted; that suit and that voice and all those fleeting little mysteries with which Jackie had only ever brushed, were theirs to dissect and destroy and peel away from the afterimage.

Jackie tried to stay with Valmont as they held him down; lay there with him on the warehouse floor and closed his eyes as the jolt of breathtaking pain announced the breaking of his right leg. And then the bullet wound in his left thigh was invaded by the manicured claws of Hyena, and Valmont howled and Jackie joined him, soaking up the notion ravenously as he tried to kid himself that this coldly documented tower of facts could ever be a real thing to him. _Stand up,_ the vamp commanded him. So Jackie got to Valmont's feet, trembling in his efforts to maintain balance on his wounded right leg. That was when Jackal came up behind with a crowbar. Jackie glimpsed him through the hindsight of the coroner's report. Darting out of the way on reflex as the metal flew through the air, he was torn from Valmont, who in an instant knew a hell that Jackie could not imagine, and screamed bloody murder as the crowbar smashed his kneecap and sent him toppling to the ground.

The rest was inconceivable to Jackie. The breaking of each finger, the inversion of his ribcage, the cigarette burns. They'd smeared make-up on him and torn off his clothes. And they had raped him repeatedly - an irregular punishment for the Pack, but perversely appropriate in light of his relationship with Xanatos. Jackie glanced between Valmont's legs, glimpsing a cleaned up cavernous opening not unlike the base of a hand puppet. He bit his lip, wondering how Valmont had felt. But then, had he not survived such abuse before? In Hollowlands prison he'd attracted enough attention to deem it plausible. Perhaps he'd sold himself for drugs when he hit rock bottom. He'd sold himself to Xanatos, after all.

And then Jackie felt his chest tighten, and an immense feeling of loneliness overcame as he stood in the morgue with the corpse of his enemy. It occurred to him that there were things about the crimelord he would never understand, because Valmont had been forever betraying the inimitable union they felt when they were in combat; cheating on him with this hell that Jackie could not comprehend, because he was a simple man with modest aspirations and far too much luck.

Jackie knew then: he'd taken the best of him. He'd taken his sunny banter and his self-indulgent smirk; the moments in which Valmont enjoyed a chance of winning even though he never did and probably knew he never would, because he never won anything else in his life except for the freedom to keep on losing.

And then Jackie almost wished he hadn't come to the morgue. Valmont could have remained an enigma; a supernova of phantom sensation that overthrew time and emblemized the blissful exceptionality they'd shared. An afterimage. He wondered if he'd ever been with the crimelord consistently for this long. Or if they had ever been this alone - the camera's were busted in the morgue after all.

With this peace of mind, he bent down and gently planted a kiss on the dead man's forehead.

"I'm sorry I ever allowed myself to think we had something in common."

But as he turned and made his way up the stairs, he wondered if he was really sorry that the only thing they'd had in common, that intangible something they'd shared on the flipside of their every-day lives, was all that he had extracted from the man amidst a storm of suffering, and when it was over only Valmont had paid for it.


End file.
